subject: How Does The Pay Per Click Advertising Work [print this page] Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a very cost-effective way for businesses of any size to market their products online. Regardless of the number of times your ad appears on screen, you only pay when someone actually clicks on it. Imagine running an ad in the New York Times and paying nothing for it to appear, but instead paying only when an interested customer calls you. This levels the playing field and puts this type of online marketing within reach of nearly any business of any size in any location. The rate you pay is called Cost Per Click (CPC).
One of the strongest advantages of PPC advertising is that the ads appear only to users who are interested, based on criteria that you establish up front. If you sell equipment for cross-country skiing you could set up a PPC ad on one of the search engines to appear when someone uses the phrase cross country ski equipment.
In addition to your website being listed at the top of the indexed list because of its expertly executed search engine optimization, your company will be listed on the side as a sponsored link. You pay only if the searcher clicks on your link.
PPC advertising is available through a multitude of sites, including social media, but the three largest are Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter, all of which price their service on a bid basis, vs. a flat-rate CPC model. In a bid-based system, the advertiser sets or "bids" the maximum amount he is willing to pay per click, which is then compared to his competitors' bids. Generally, the business with the highest bid is listed at the top of the sponsored links. Conversely, in the flat-rate model the CPC is determined in advance by the site's publisher.
Social media sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn and most of the blogging sites offer Pay Per Click advertising. Micro-blogging mega site Twitter recently entered the market as well. Unlike PPC ads on search engines, social media ads are targeted to specific demographics, as determined by the advertiser. You could instruct Facebook to display your ad to anyone who has listed skiing as an interest, or to everyone who "likes" your page or any page related in any way to skiing. Your ad will appear on the right side of the Facebook page and you'll pay only when someone clicks on it.
